Excerpts – Gamal Albinsaid, a young Indonesian doctor, has recently been awarded the inaugural “Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize” from the Prince of Wales. He was given the award during a dinner reception at the Buckingham Palace at the end of January. His innovative project helps the poorest communities gain access to health services and education through the collection and recycling of garbage called the Garbage Clinical Insurance enterprise.

Photo: Courtesy of Indonesia Medika/Gamal AlbinsaidMr Gamal Albinsaid received his award from HRH Prince of Wales during a dinner reception at the Buckingham palace at the end of January 2014.

Mr Albinsaid, currently the chief executive officer (CEO) of Indonesia Medika, is the Founder of the Indonesian social enterprise Garbage Clinical Insurance (GCI). He was inspired to set up the micro-insurance programme to empower people to take an active role in managing their waste while improving their sanitation.

The 24-year-old doctor set up the initiative in 2009 when he was still a medical student at the Brawijaya University in Malang, East Java province. Mr Albinsaid was saddened upon hearing the death of a three year old child from diarrhea because the parents could not afford to take the child to any clinic for help.

The GCI has help communities in need turn in their household waste into something that could improve their health.

The scheme provides insurance to members of the clinic in return for their garbage. Every weekend, members bring their organic and non-organic waste to a collection point near the clinic to be directly processed and sold.

Afterward, collected garbage is processed into money considered as “health fund premium” for all members.

New York City residents produce 11,000 tons of garbage every day. Every day! This astonishing statistic is just one of the reasons Robin Nagle started a research project with the city’s Department of Sanitation. She walked the routes, operated mechanical brooms, even drove a garbage truck herself–all so she could answer a simple-sounding but complicated question: who cleans up after us?

Robin Nagle is an anthropologist with a very particular focus… garbage

A community-based organisation in the Kenyan slum area of Kibera set out to clean up garbage and deal with waste water; Ushiriki Wa Safi ended up creating a community cooker that turns waste into an energy source.

Open sewers and piles of garbage are an all too familiar scene in many of Kenya’s poorest urban areas. Local authorities are invisible in most of these slums, and poor public hygiene and the absence of sanitation leaves residents to their own devices to maintain a level of cleanliness and keep diseases like diarrhoea at bay.

But some have seen this as an opportunity to bring about change to communities. Ushirika Wa Safi – (loosely translated, the name means “an association to maintain cleanliness” in Swahili) – a community-based organisation in Kibera, was formed to deal with the garbage problem in Laini Saba, one of the thirteen villages that form Kibera slums, often described as Africa’s largest.

Robin Nagle, the anthropologist-in-residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation, will be responding to readers’ questions about her work as a garbologist.

Robin Nagle

Readers who would like to ask Dr. Nagle a question should do so in the comments box below. Her first set of responses will be published on Wednesday.

Dr. Nagle was named anthropologist-in-residence for the city’s Department of Sanitation in 2006, but her fascination with garbage started in childhood. Her father took her camping in the Adirondacks one summer in the 1970s, and behind the lean-to at their campsite in the middle of a seemingly pristine forest they discovered a small open-air dump. She was horrified that hikers and campers could be so thoughtless. “Who did they think was going to clean up their mess?” she asked.

After graduate work in anthropology at Columbia University, Dr. Nagle started to design a research project with the Department of Sanitation around a variation on that question from her childhood: Who cleans up after New Yorkers? More specifically, what is it to be a sanitation worker in the city today? What does it mean to put on the uniform, navigate the streets, heft the weight, and learn the city from a unique and intimate perspective? Why does the most important uniformed force on the streets face a persistent stigma, and how do sanitation folk reconcile that contradiction?

In searching for answers to these and a host of related questions, Dr. Nagle has spent many hours accompanying sanitation workers on their rounds, flinging trash side-by-side with them, interviewing women and men of various ranks. She held the job herself for a brief time. The initial questions have evolved into several new initiatives. The Sanitation Department archives are being collected, organized and cataloged for the first time. They will be a resource for scholars and students in many fields who want a better understanding of a crucial but little-studied aspect of urban history. Likewise, the Sanitation Oral History Project, a collaboration between N.Y.U., Columbia, the Sanitation Department and the parks department, aims to collect life histories of sanitation personnel and members of the public who have a connection to the city’s solid waste issues. Both the archives and the oral history project will become facets of the Sanitation Museum, which is in the planning stages.

Like this:

The Environment Management Department of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) said that it would take another three days to clear all garbage heaped in the capital valley over the last 12 days. The Department started garbage disposal from 1 February 2010 after the unions of local bodies decided to return to work. Employees had been on strike since 21 January 2010.

“Altogether 60 KMC garbage trucks are being used round the clock,” said Rabin Man Shrestha, chief at the department, adding, “Our staff will be busy in waste removal till the midnight.” Over 4,200 tons of garbage had piled up in the valley during the strike, he informed, adding, some 900 employees were engaged in garbage disposal. When dumping resumed, various organisations and government officials started pressurizing KMC to clear the mess from their respective neighborhoods early on, Shrestha said.

On Monday, calling off their protests, local body union employees said they would not sit for dialogue with CPN-UML-led government and would not allow concerned ministers to enter their office. Similarly, they also decided to continue their protests inside the concerned local body offices by putting black flags in front of the main gates, Ganga Dhar Gautam, president of Local Body Employees’ Union Nepal, said. “We will boycott all the government ministers in the local bodies as part of our protest,” Gautam added.

When KMC garbage carrying vehicles were not operating during the protest of the local body staff, Nepal Police and Armed Police Force personnel jointly disposed 500 metric tons of garbage at Tikathali over the last three days.

Garbage Trucks Teach Children to Save the Environment in New Earth Day Book, ‘Colonel Trash Truck’

Redondo Beach, CA (PRWEB) April 13, 2009 — Parents have a new way to teach children how to save the environment with the story of one of the world’s most eco-friendly garbage trucks in author Kathleen Crawley’s new children’s book “Colonel Trash Truck…Keeping the Planet Clean and Green.”

Colonel Trash Truck is a likable, fun-filled character who is extremely focused on his mission to win the garbage war. Crawley wrote the book, illustrated by Manuel Conde, for kids ages 3 to 6, with the goal to teach them early on in life to recycle and pick up trash, just in time for Earth Day 2009.

Being green is one of the most important issues today, but the number of those who actually recycle is estimated to be as low as 20 percent and as high as 50 percent. Why isn’t everyone recycling? Could it be that the older people get the less likely they are to start a new, good habit? If so, how do parents get kids to recycle and pick up trash early so that they will continue through adulthood?

Enter Colonel Trash Truck. Crawley noticed there are few things that really catch kids’ attention and believes imaginary, humorous characters are the best way to grab their interest and affect their behavior. She also noticed just how much kids love trucks, especially trucks that visit the house every week — garbage trucks.

“There’s no better way to teach kids to respect and save the environment than to introduce them to Colonel Trash Truck,” Crawley says. “‘Colonel Trash Truck’ appeals to children with its fun rhymes, vibrant illustrations and superhero-like persona. Colonel Trash Truck believes cleaning up trash and recycling is something we all must do and he wants nothing more than to have kids join him in his quest to ‘Keep the Planet Clean and Green’.”

CAPE ELIZABETH (July 31, 2008): Cape Elizabeth town councilors are considering regulations that would decrease town waste disposal bills by cutting down the amount of waste Cape residents throw out.

The proposed regulations would create a so-called “pay-per-bag” system for residents, require businesses to handle their own waste and not use the Cape Elizabeth transfer station, require commercial haulers to use facilities other than the Cape transfer station and require town departments to improve their recycling efforts.

While the findings of the new WHO report on WASH in healthcare facilities are indeed grim (and might I actually add that there are so many limitations to the current data presented in the report that conditions are most likely a lot worse than reported) I am very excited that this report has come to light. All data in the report is secondary - meaning it […]

Hi Elisabeth, Of course - I currently work for WaterAid as a policy officer (health / monitoring and accountability). One of the projects I am currently working on involves working collaboratively with the WASH and NTD sectors to develop joint indicators for monitoring. My passion for WASH and health, and specifically integration with NTDs stems from my MSc […]

Composting is commonly used as an effective means of stabilizing wastewater biosolids and reducing pathogens to very low concentrations. However, it has been shown that under certain conditions Salmonella can regrow in previously composted biosolids. Growth of seeded Salmonella typhimurium in composted biosolids ranging from two weeks to two years maturity w […]

Hi Joe, What studies did you read? Why would anyone expect the finished ''biosolids'' (which are almost indistinguishable from soil) to become sterile? What would pathogenic microbes adapted to living in water without oxygen in our guts have to do in a pile of dry soil? Plus it is obvious that if there is new fecal contamination, the prev […]

We're happy to announce our new seminars to you: Attention! Please note that all the following seminars will be conducted in German only! San ABC plus The next Seminar is an advanced training which aims to deepen the knowledge of the participants on sustainable sanitation in the context of development cooperation. The training will take place Aachen fro […]

The Africa APPG together with Polygeia seeks to explore the lessons from the Ebola crisis for community-led health systems strengthening through examining the current response to the Ebola crisis, and gathering evidence from experts and the affected communities in West Africa.

Communities declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) through Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) did not experience any case of the Ebola outbreak, despite other surrounding communities in Marbibi county that experienced the worst cases.

The CLTS Knowledge Hub is hosting a webinar on Participatory Design Development for Sanitation on Thursday 26th March 2015 at 10am GMT. Ben Cole will be discussing his experiences in applying participatory design to accompany and extend Malawi’s national CLTS program since 2012